Victory: An Island Tale

In Victory (1915) Conrad returns to the Malay Archipelago, to the setting of his first mature novel, Lord Jim, and in Axel Heyst he creates a hero who is in many ways similar to Jim, a noble altruist destroyed by his ideals. Heyst is emotionally crippled by the influence of his dead father, a sceptical philosopher who has bequeathed to Heyst an attitude to life summed up in the father's dying words: 'Look on - make no sound.' Despite this injunction Heyst allows himself to become inextricably involved with an English Cockney girl whom he rescues from Giancomo's Travelling Ladies' Orchestra and carries off to his isolated retreat on the island of Samburan. His action incurs the fatal wrath of Schomberg, the island's innkeeper, who sends in pursuit of Heyst three demonic strangers whose invasion of his island paradise leads rapidly to the novel's violent and tragic close.

From inside the book

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Page 14 Polite attention, what's due from one gentleman listening to another, was what he
showed; and, as usual, it was catching; so that Morrison pulled himself together
and finished his narrative in a conversational tone, with a man-of-the- world air.

Page 15 Listen. This morning on board, in my cabin, I went down on my knees and prayed
for help. I went down on my knees!" "You are a believer, Morrison?" asked Heyst
with a distinct note of respect. "Surely I am not an infidel." Morrison was swiftly ...

Page 27 Schomberg was the only one who resisted the infection. Big, manly in a portly
style, and profusely bearded, with a glass of beer in his thick paw, he would
approach some table where the topic of the hour was being discussed, would listen for a ...

Page 46 Mrs. Schomberg's immobility gave her an appearance of listening intently.
Perhaps she was really listening; but Schomberg must have been finishing his
sleep in some distant part of the house. The silence was profound, and lasted
long ...

Page 75 I wish to goodness he had gone somewhere else to show off his superiority. Here
I have got up this series of concerts for you gentlemen, just to make things a little
brighter generally ; and do you think he'll condescend to step in and listen to a ...

Page 119 - Impudent, overbearing, swindling sharper," he went on. "I have a good mind to " He was beside himself in his lurid, heavy, Teutonic manner, so unlike the picturesque, lively rage of the Latin races; and though his eyes strayed about irresolutely, yet his swollen, angry features awakened in the miserable woman over whom he had been tyrannising for years a fear for his precious carcass, since the poor creature had nothing else but that to hold on to in the world. She knew him well; but she did not...

Page 188 - Are we likely to be seen on our way?" "No, unless by native craft," said Schomberg. Ricardo nodded, satisfied. Both these white men looked on native life as a mere play of shadows. A play of shadows the dominant race could walk through unaffected and disregarded in the pursuit of its incomprehensible aims and needs.

Page 4 - ... the clear stars, a dull red glow, expanding and collapsing spasmodically like the end of a gigantic cigar puffed at intermittently in the dark. Axel Heyst was also a smoker; and when he lounged out on his verandah with his cheroot, the last thing before going to bed, he made in the night the same sort of glow and of the same size as that other one so many miles away. We could hardly fail to note so "empathic...

Page 239 - I've never killed a man or loved a woman — not even in my thoughts, not even in my dreams." He raised her hand to his lips, and let them rest on it for a space, during which she moved a little closer to him. After the lingering kiss he did not relinquish his hold.

Page 229 - I've been speaking. What of it?" "And you mean to say that he was your friend?" "You have heard enough to judge for yourself. You know as much of our connection as I know myself. The people in this part of the world went by appearances, and called us friends, as far as I can remember. Appearances — what more, what better can you ask for? In fact you can't have better. You can't have anything else.

Page 103 - Three years of such companionship at that plastic and impressionable age were bound to leave in the boy a profound mistrust of life. The young man learned to reflect, which is a destructive process, a reckoning of the cost.

Page 64 - Odious enough, I dare say. And you, of course — not being a married man — were free to step in. Ah, well!" He sat down in the stern-sheets, and already had the steering lines in his hands when Heyst observed abruptly : "The world is a bad dog. It will bite you if you give it a chance; but I think that here we can safely defy the fates.